NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2019: Transfer of Antimicrobial Resistance Genes between Humans, Animals, and the Environment in urban Bangladesh

这一行动为NSF 2019财年生物学博士后研究奖学金提供资金，扩大了生物学领域代表性不足群体的参与。该奖学金支持一项针对该研究员的研究和培训计划，该计划将增加生物学中代表性不足的群体的参与。这项研究将调查抗生素耐药性的传播，这是一种日益严重的社会威胁，对低收入和高收入国家都有影响。虽然很容易观察到抗生素耐药性的全球传播，但对家庭规模的抗生素耐药性转移还没有很好的了解。这位研究员将在家庭层面上探索抗生素耐药性基因如何在低收入和中等收入国家的人、动物和环境之间传播。该项目将确定在宿主之间转移抗生素耐药性的最重要的环境中介途径。通过了解抗生素耐药性是如何传播的知识，可以用来更好地制定政策、工程控制，并提出对抗抗生素耐药性的行为建议。为了增加少数族裔对生物科学的参与，这位研究员将把抗生素耐药性和基因组学纳入一个教学模块，供波士顿当地社区大学使用。本单元的目标是让学生接触研究，并向他们介绍当今社会面临的科学挑战。抗生素耐药性可以通过两种主要机制传播：抗生素耐药性细菌的繁殖和抗生素耐药性基因的转移。这项研究旨在利用最新开发的元基因组学工具来表征环境传播途径(人、水、动物、土壤之间)中的这两种耐药性传播机制。将使用长读和短读测序来获得耐药细菌的菌株水平信息。此外，通过量化不同家庭样本(人、动物、水、土壤)中的基因丰度，将使用互补方法(QPCR)来识别抗生素耐药性基因的关键储存库。除了这项研究之外，该研究员还将开发和实施一个以排序为中心的社区学院教学模块。社区大学生不仅将了解最新的测序技术，而且他们收集的数据将直接有助于建立一个众包数据库，该数据库绘制出美国的抗生素耐药性图。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2019, Broadening Participation of Groups Under-represented in Biology. The fellowship supports a research and training plan for the Fellow that will increase the participation of groups underrepresented in biology. This research will investigate the spread of antibiotic resistance, which is a rising threat to society, affecting both low-and high-income countries alike. While the global spread of antibiotic resistance is readily observed, the transfer of antibiotic resistance at the household scale is not well understood. The Fellow will explore how antibiotic resistance genes propagate between humans, animals, and the environment in low-and middle-income countries at the household level. This project will identify the most important environmentally-mediated pathways for the transfer of antibiotic resistance between hosts. The knowledge obtained from understanding how antibiotic resistance spreads can be used to better devise policy, engineering controls, and suggest behavior to combat antimicrobial resistance. To increase minority participation in the biological sciences, the Fellow will incorporate antibiotic resistance and genomics in a teaching module to be used in local community colleges in Boston. The goal of this module is to expose students to research and introduce them to scientific challenges that face our society today. Antibiotic resistance can spread through two main mechanisms: propagation of antibiotic resistant bacteria and transfer of antibiotic resistance genes. This research aims to characterize both mechanisms of resistance spread in environmental transmission pathways (between humans, water, animals, soil) using recently developed metagenomic tools. Long and short read sequencing will be used to obtain strain-level information on antibiotic resistant bacteria. Additionally, complimentary methods (qPCR) will be used to identify key reservoirs of antibiotic resistance genes by quantifying the abundance of genes in different household samples (humans, animals, water, soil). Beyond this research, the Fellow will develop and implement a teaching module for community colleges centered around sequencing. Not only will community college students learn about the latest sequencing techniques, but also the data they collect will directly contribute to a crowd-sourced database that maps antibiotic resistance in the United States.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.